Subject: (10) MAYDAY, MAYDAY AMERICA!
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X-Comment: The Transnational Radical Party List
RADICAL PARTY, THE TRANSNATIONAL TRANSPARTY
ABSTRACT: Insert published on payment on the "New York Times" of 28th
Septembre. The text contains a solicitation to join the radical party.
Lastly, it suggests the creation of an interactive link with the Radical
Party via Internet.
(THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28 september 1993)
FOR ANTIPROHIBITIONISM, NOW!
War on drugs won by drugs
Prohibitionism is not merely an ideology. It is also a system of vested
interests, laws, violations, and war against human beings: against tens of
millions of exploited crop-growers, recruited pushers, and sick drug users;
against hundreds of millions of innocent victims, the police, the
administration of justice, and law and order.
Antiprohibitionism means regulation, control, the strength of laws, norms,
and cures. It means immediately reducing the value of the banned drugs to
practically zero; destroying the main source of power of the various
mafias; eliminating the principal cause of widespread violence against
ordinary citizens. Antiprohibition must organize itself right now as a
unified system for a way out of prohibitionism.
The Radical Party is committed to this task. In many countries, in many
parliaments, and in many places of study and research, it has already
created projects and simulations. These are, nevertheless, inadequate
because there is a great need for activists, human and financial resources,
and information offensives, in order to neutralize the tremendous power of
organized crime and power gone crazy in unprecedented ways. However, we
have made some headway with referendums and laws decriminalizing drug use
in the European Parliament.
We must organize, coordinate, and empower the great strength that is ours
at an idealistic, democratic, social, human - and humanist level. This wast
strength is now fragmented in thousands of small groups, individuals,
organizations, and victims. It is presently a loser, the victim of a form
of ideological terrorism whose violence is equal to the impotence and fear
of its perpetrators. The Radical Party has determined which international
Conventions and national laws must be changed. It has devised an
appropriate global method for resolving a situation that cannot be changed
simply by applying antiprohibitionism in a single country or in a few
States.
Given adequate means - very little when compared to the vast sums now spent
to no effect - the Radical Party can organize nonviolent popular actions,
on the one hand, and complementary legislative and political actions,
simultaneously, on the other.
Prohibitionism is transnational. Antiprohibitionism must therefore be
transnational. And it is already. However, there is an immediate need for
people to act with courage and generosity, to support and join us now: at
least tens of thousands of people in New York and in the U.S., from
workplaces, universities, families, and organizations. This is why we are
asking that the Radical Party, the transnational "transparty," might now be
allowed to become, above all, "American", in the same way that it has
become "Italian", "European", and already much more.
Meanwhile, prohibitionism continues along the same road. To us it seems
that it is causing the scourge it claims to want to wipe out to spread and
worsen in the most terrifying way. But it is one of the prohibitionists'
rights, to insist and they are - or appear to be - in the majority.
Therefore we must put an end to prohibitionism.
The antiprohibitionism that followed prohibitionism in the States, has
already made history: first there was Al Capone, then came Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. Two names linked to two different eras, two Americas, two worlds
and two ways of experiencing them. At least, this is the way most people
look at it.
We denounced, in our leading article, the rift between human awareness and
science, on the one hand, and "politics", on the other. The following is a
terrible example of this.
We all know that prohibition has caused the cultivation of drug crops to
spread from a few isolated countries to dozens of States, to larger and
larger areas of the world.
We all know that prohibition has forested organized crime that has no
parallel regarding wealth, power, dimension, and the number of people in
its service, from producers to pushers, and drug users all over the world.
We all know, too, that prohibition changes addicts dependent on the banned
drugs - and only on these substances - from sick people who need to be
cared for and cured into individuals who perpetrate violence and spread
disease daily, who are protected by the clandestine situation in which they
are obliged to exist, who constantly conscript other "soldiers" into the
armed forces of crime, who die because their drugs have been "cut" and
because of the life the law forces them to lead (and not because of their
drug-taking).
We all know that this war has been lost. But it continues to be waged by
the prohibitionists in the same way that Nazism continued its war, deluding
itself that it was possible to arrive at a "final solution," to create an
"absolute weapon," because the Nazi cause and Nazi violence were superior.
This was an illusion cherished by a handful of madmen, or by power gone
crazy, but no longer by the vast majority of German people.
The German population was right. Those in power were wrong. The Germans,
oppressed by a dictatorship and torn apart by the war, were unable to
rebel.
What about us? Come on, don't be afraid! Find the strength. Let's all
find the strength. Now.
Marco Pannella
President of the Radical Party
-----------------------
" (...) Prohibitionism is a worn-out cure that has been tried extensively;
but it only makes things worse for drug-users and other people. (...)
Addicts are forced to join up with criminal organizations in order to
obtain drugs; they turn to crime to finance their habit; they run the
constant risk of contracting diseases, and they dice with death. Other
people are in danger from the moment drugs are banned. Drug users in the
U.S. are largely responsible for all the "street crimes", as they are
called. Legalize drugs and there would be a drop in "street crimes"
immediately. (...) Why don't we simply put an end to drug-trafficking?
(...)."
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate and libertarian economist at the Convention
held by the IAL (International Antiprohibitionist League), federated with
the Radical Party (Athens, November 1990)
